Commercial rant time...

[D'Snowth]

If you want to see a furniture store commercial with a loud and obnoxious spokesperson, check out this little gem from I don't know where:

A free . . . onion?

 

[Drtooth]

Luckily I don't get those kinds of furnature ads.

I get freaking Bob and his cohorts using slang that was considered extremely lame and out of touch in the 1950's. Always complaining about the "Hoity Toity stores." When the heck was the last time you heard anyone utter that even ironically?

Actually Bob's commercials come in two flavors. Obnoxious or downright freaking creepy with dead eyed stop motion figures. I give them all the credit in the world for using stop motion, no matter how much Adobe After Effects aided it is. But in execution, they're ugly and terrible.

But on the plus side, half the commercials I really hated currently seem to have disappeared quietly. I'm no longer assaulted by Mr. Bag or the RedBull commercial with the horridly tone deaf brown note of a song.

 

[Drtooth]

Here's a trend that really ticks me off. Political scare tactic based ads for scam debt consolidation services. Bad enough we had scare tactics to drive morons into gold based scams, but really!?!

So this commercial I just watched that almost made me punch a hole in the wall started off with:

"This is America's national debt. This is you in debt." As if the two are completely mutual and exactly the same with the added tone of ooooohhhh boy that gumment! How DARE they live beyond their means?! I'm losing muh hard earned money cuz'a them! Libertarianism forever, but someone help me!!!

They continue with "Are you better off" which you'll remember as the Republican catch phrase back in 2009 when they started trying to pass the blame onto everyone that wasn't them while continuing to push forward with everything they did to screw everything up. So really. Who wrote this commercial? Glenn Beck?

To me the commercial says "Hey, stupid people! Yeah..it- it's the gumment's fault that you blew your money, and somehow their going in debt for doing various things you at the time agreed to until someone you didn't like was elected is DIRECTLY the reason you're in debt. Come on, you dumb ol' buzzards. Use our crappy unregulated consolidation service that can only be advertised during the middle of the day during old sitcom reruns (because anything from the past 3 decades is frightening because you're not young anymore) that will put you deeper in debt while we siphon every single asset you have. The side effect of getting you idiots angry at nothing and electing jerks out of anger means no legal action can be taken on us so we can screw you old dodos without any repercussions. Here's our ever changing number. Try not to be suspicious about us."

 

[Drtooth]

Something much less heavy...

There's this really bad Trip Adviser commercial that's been getting under my skin recently. Something where some couple's dog keeps going "BOOK! BOOK" in the most unholy way possible trying to get it to sound like a dog's natural barking. Here's why I have a problem with it.

• No amount of suspension of disbelief is going to convince me that a dog can read or even gives 2 of its own turds about going on vacation or not. There's a variant of the commercial where they add a narrator to try and make a story out of this (the dog wants to go on vacation and goads the owners into booking one online)
• If I can get this straight, the commercial essentially says that the couple is too freaking wishy washy (or outright stupid) to decide to book a trip themselves, and needs the third opinion of a freaking dog!
• Aforementioned unholy fake barking that sounds like the word book. OH! I get it. The words Bark and Book almost sound sort of alike because they start and end with the same letter. I don't know what's worse. The fact that it's based on a terrible, lazy pun that doesn't even work ("Bark" is a term for what sound they make, the more accurate sound effect being "Woof"), or the sound of someone doing the worst impersonation of a dog humanly possible and the dog sounds like an elderly fat man choking to death on his swollen tongue saying Book for some reason.
• Of course, it's a freaking lazy concept that clearly came out out of the project being due in the morning and it being 4AM and wanting to sleep their drunkenness off for a couple hours. I talked about this with someone and they gave me the whole "viewers are morons" excuse and I had to counter with "yeah, but even the lowest of the low common denominators aren't stupid enough to find this commercial imaginative, clever, or memorable outside of how poorly done it is."

I was going through some stuff that week, as my computer died and I wasn't sure how I could get another one. I was upset about something before that, and somehow this commercial set me off. It's just... there's bad that's so intensely offensive, revolting, and enraging... that's for sure but then there's this weird breed of bad where something shouldn't be awful. You know. Something that's just mildly annoying because of how poor it is... but then you realize that someone was paid good money to make it, and you're more annoyed by that. All I'm saying is someone got paid good money to make a bad commercial with lazy writing and has made a career on coasting. I hear the whole "athletes/super models/celebrities make too much money for what they do" argument a lot, but even then... athletes can be horribly screwed for whatever reasons, models have to go to extreme lengths of dieting and exercise we would HATE to be part of, ditto for celebrities and with them fame is fleeting or they get pigeon holed.

What I'm saying is, this horrible dog commercial is proof advertising is the most overpaid outlet there is, and like, No wonder MadMen was so popular. They wanted to see competent people with thought provoking ideas they cared about. By no means am I saying all ad exs are overblown, talentless, overpaid hacks that don't give the thinnest of craps. There are great commercials out there. Ones that deserve all the money they get. But then there's also lazy humor and writing that come out of untalented or lackadaisical types that think a dog sort of saying a word when it doesn't even sound like it came out of a dog. There's like this weird scale of really good, memorable concepts and ten minutes to deadline. I really should have gone into advertising.

 

[fuzzygobo]

Heinz Mustard. People dressed in costumes as bottles of condiments.
Heinz Ketchup hooked up at a party with Heinz Mustard, and Ordinary Mustard still bitter after breaking up with Ketchup. (Now she's hanging with a hot dog. What a weenie!((pardon the bad pun)))
But seeing the bottle of ketchup eating a hot dog... okay, gotta lay off the peyote buttons.

Yes, there are some Clio-worthy commercials out there that can be appreciated as art, then there's hack jobs like this.

 

[Drtooth]

For someone like me who complains a lot about commercials, I actually have a high tolerance for stupid. Now, it's not so much I like those Heinz commercials you speak of so much as I get what they're trying to do, but somehow it doesn't work in execution. Something has to be really bad, offensive, annoying, or just overall idiotic to really tick me off.

I think I get the concept of mildly stupid commercials sticking in someone's head better than a good one because... well, stupid talking bottles of mustard eating hot dogs did stick out in your mind for being stupid, didn't it? Just like how the two Sonic guys make me want to yell at the screen, yet I also want to beg someone to drive me to the only one there is to get one of those slushies or shakes. That is how advertisement works.

Though I will say, no one did obnoxious jerk in a suit like Crash Bandicoot did back in the 90's.

I remember when they did a really bad imitation of that with Milk.

But to me there's a difference between stupidity and supreme stupidity. Like...ever watch the commercials they have on Daytime TV? The low rent ones about tax services with CGI so bottom of the line it's indescribable? I can't even say PS1 cutscene. The Wild Woody...err, I mean WIIIIIIIIIIILD Woody cutscenes on Sega CD look like Inside Out compared to those and you're like "Yeah! I'd definitely trust my money with a company that can't afford to look like a failing animation student's project he whipped up 5 minutes to deadline." Well, Max from Bluetax has just been dethroned. Ladies and gentlemen, Dwight the Knight.

Okay, yeah. The opening bit looks decent, but that ugly thing fidgeting around with his helium enhanced obnoxious voice. I mean, really!?! Even Max managed to...I dunno... move other than flailing his arms around.

 

[MikaelaMuppet]

I really hate the local furniture ads that we have up here in New Hampshire.

I can't stand them and I think that they are very annoying.

 

[fuzzygobo]

If the ketchup bottle ate a hot dog with ketchup on it (you can see mustard in the commercial , ketchup maybe) wouldn't that be cannibalism?

How do the powers-hat-be feel about that?

 

[Drtooth]

That's one of those "don't think about it" things. Kool-Aid man gives kids his bodily fluids (unless just the pitcher is alive). Foghorn Leghorn did KFC commercials after years of trying to outsmart the Chickenhawk, which is puzzling as heck for Looney Tunes fans who actually watched his cartoons. So you have either cannibalism or characters trying to get you to want to eat them. And that's been going on for a long time too. It's never not been bizarre and awkward. That 80's SNL commercial parody about the fast food chicken shack and it's mascot going through the process of being killed and eaten (I forget what it was called) pretty much lampshaded that.

But for a flat out disturbing example? Watch the first one of these fruit snack commercials.

Yeah. You just saw a cute cartoon piece of candy stab his own heart and drain his bodily fluids. He even sort of flinches when he jabs the straw in. That's dark. I kinda like some of the other ones they did with these guys, but...

And let's not forget the new Cinnamon Toast Crunch mascots. The ones that are like the Minions, except if the Minions were creepy and wanted to eat each other.

Unfortunately, I can't find the one I find most disturbing (one where a gang of Crazy Squares sprinkle more cinnamon on a single piece so they can eat it so another one can be sprinkled with cinnamon to have the biggest look of "OH CRAP" you've ever seen before he gets eaten too... that's...that's frightening). I do like the subversion joke in this one, but all and all Wendel never ate the other bakers so...

holy crap... I forgot they disappeared and only Wendel was left. Uh Oh.

 

[D'Snowth]

Though I will say, no one did obnoxious jerk in a suit like Crash Bandicoot did back in the 90's.

Dude, I'm still waiting for you to turn this into a poop: